My Lords, I thank the Minister for that reply. I admired his straight bat, which could have been used down under, against the Australians, in the last few weeks.
I hope that noble Lords have noticed the complex web of officials who are going to be busying themselves around the union world. There is quite a cast list of people for unions to deal with. First there is the certification officer, whom they are used to dealing with, but now he has extra powers. Then there is the new assurer, who is unique in British public life. Nobody else has an assurer. No political party has an assurer. Do we have assurers to check the electoral roles in some inner city areas? Of course we do not. People do their best, and we get 80% accuracy, on average, in this area.
Why are we appointing this network of officials, who will no doubt be passing the buck if problems really do arise? I know that at the end of the day it will be the trade union that ends up in breach of the data protection legislation in the event of any complaints, despite the fact that it will all have passed through the hands of the certification officer, the assurer and an inspector. And of course, there have been no complaints—I remind people of that.
One of the problems with this debate is that the Committee stage was truncated. These measures were brought forward quickly. Because Part 2 of the Bill was paused, Part 3 was rushed forward to fill the
timetable gap. So we have not had a chance to get many people interested in this particular issue. This is perhaps the best attended debate that we have had. I hope that people who are listening with an open mind—I know that that is the position of many in this House—will reflect on this complex, bureaucratic, red-tape way of spinning some kind of web around unions, causing expense, difficulty and possible problems where no problems exist.
Union members want to be confident that their information is not misused. Contrary to what the Minister said about confidence, they will be less confident with this measure than they would be on the ground that the union accountants are doing their job properly. They are reasonably confident about that now—as confident as they can be. I am not saying that union membership administration is perfect; of course it is not. But it is in the unions’ interest to make it perfect, and the certification officer keeps an eye on what is going on.
I appreciate the Minister’s straight bat, but I would like to test the opinion of the House.